Archive for December, 2015

Count your blessings my dear readers and take heart in that inventory.

So as we draw to a close this elder year 2015 AD, I take but a moments pause to wish my friends and good readers well and much happiness and wishes for a healthy and prosperous New Year.

Verily, this jester says, “All Is Well, That Ends Well“. And 2015 has indeed ended well. The wealth of family/friends who have been such a vital and loving pressence in our lives. Truly our love has been returned and it goes back to the senders too.

Let me endebt myself further and borrow again from the great bard to close out this year. In Shakespeare’s play, “All’s Well That Ends Well”, in the first Act, the first Scene is a quote that suits me well to use though I steal it from a woman’s lips:

That I should love a bright particular starAnd think to wed it, she who is so above me:In her bright radiance and collateral light.

I love her so and our growing family and our friends too. Those who love her cannot be faulted for she is such a force of a nature and a wonder to behold. And those who fault her, do not know love. Theirs is a terrible loss indeed. Pity those fools for their jealousy and praise this jester for his steadfastness in the face of such folly. Bless my wife for her devotion made stronger and more holy for her mettle that was tempered by the trifles of miscreants.

I would like to thank my readers for another fine year. Reads of the blog were phenomenal; The reads could not have and would not have been so, without you. You, my good readers, are a part of that inventory of blessings that I have counted. Interact with me on Facebook, Twitter (@Stanczyk_), and/or LinkedIn too.

Those are my closing thoughts for 2015. Better #Genealogy in the coming year to all genealogists!

Stanczyk got another genealogical question. It was from Cris (on Ancestry.com).

Cris wrote …

Cris, welcome to my blog. I have good news so please keep reading. As you no doubt know, I have SLAWINSKI in my own family tree. Most likely you will find your name in Polish Archive / Church records written as SŁAWIŃSKI in Polish and as СЛАВИНСКИЙЬ in Russian records.

Since your ancestral village is near to Sandomierz, I knew it would be in Kielce AP (state archive of Poland) and in particular its office in Sandomierz AP. This Kielce / Sandomierz area is where the overwhelming majority of my Polish ancestors come from. As a result, I knew to check Metryki.GenBaza.pl to see if your grandmother Anna Slawinska might have her records online. The good news is yes, those records are online in GenBaza. It has Sulislawice (which is also the parish) in the years: 1810-1910 [inclusive].

You will need to be able to read Polish for records 1810-1868 (possibly Latin before 1820). For records in the years 1869-1910, they will be written in Russian/Cyrillic characters.

You will also need to register for userid / password on Metryki.GenBaza.pl (which takes you to GenPol.pl) and do so in Polish to gain access to that database of church record images. This is doable, but not a trivial task. Once you get an email with your userid/password, contact me again and I will post the link to my blog where I wrote a user guide to using the website.

But it is the holiday season and your Slawinski may be relatives of my Slawinski. So this jester is willing to find your grandmother’s birth record (if she was in fact born in Sulislawice). To do so, please contact me in Ancestry again with:

Your grandmother’s birth date (the year must be in the range 1810 … 1910)

Your grandmother’s parents names (great-grandparents).

I will use that info to search for and send you the birth record if I find it. I will also provide a translation of the key genealogical facts (dates, names, ages, etc.) from what I am expecting will be a Russian language record.